MLB Exec: Mets Laying in the Weeds Looking for Bargains

Joel Sherman of the New York Post asks whether the Mets relatively quiet offseason is a tactical decision, or just a lack of ingenuity by the front office coupled and more evidence that ownership lacks the financial resources to keep up with all the other teams.

For example, is Michael Cuddyer the Mets’ big offseason move because they targeted him as the best option, or because two years at $22 million and a quick signing demonstrates the rather paltry extent to which the Mets are willing to extend themselves monetarily and the lack of wheeling-dealing vision of Sandy Alderson’s regime?

One AL West executive thinks the Mets are just laying in the weeds waiting for some January free-agent bargains, a strategy that Alderson himself has often abided by.

The same executive scoffs at the notion of the team adding a big-ticket item like Troy Tulowitzki, “I don’t think they have the financial flexibility to pay for him even if they could get him.”

“No doubt had the Mets extended their search they would have had the secondary prospects necessary to land any of the three outfielders – Matt Kemp, Justin Upton and Wil Myers – that San Diego’s aggressive new general manager, A.J. Preller, did without touching the best of his prospect base.”

Sherman argues that all three of those outfielders are arguably better alternatives for the Mets than Cuddyer and that none required a first-round draft pick as compensation. The 36 year old Cuddyer, he says, will be the second-oldest starting outfielder in the NL to Philadelphia’s Marlon Byrd, 37.

“The key part of the winter agenda is building the best team possible, he concludes. But are the Mets doing that, or are they building the best team a lack of money and lack of enterprise can buy?

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